By turns, an elegy, a celebration, and a social history, The Last Fine Time is a tour de force of lyrical style. Verlyn Klinkenborg chronicles the life of a family-owned restaurant in Buffalo, New York, from its days as a prewar Polish tavern to its reincarnation as George & Eddie's, a swank nightspot serving highballs and French-fried shrimp to a generation of optimistic and prosperous Americans. In the inevitable dimming of the neon sign outside the restaurant, we see both the passing of an old world way of life and the end to the postwar exuberance that was Eddie Wenzek's "last fine time."

Verlyn Kilnkenborg comes from a family of Iowa farmers. A member of the editorial board of the New York Times, Klinkenborg has been published in the New Yoker, Harper's, Esquire, National Geographic, Smithsonian, and the New York Times Magazine. He is the author of Making Hay and a collection of essays, The Rural Life.

— Washington Post

— Anne Tyler, Boston Globe

— Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times

— New Statesman

— Reamy Jansen, Bloomsbury Review

— Robert Wilson, USA Today

“[Klinkenborg] has wrapped a profound social history around, of all things, a family-owned taproom in Buffalo, NY. Researching both the city and the family . . . Klinkenborg sensitively addresses the shifts in consciousness with passing generations. Men and women born during the baby-boom years will recognize their own parents in this poignant social portrait.”— Joseph F. Keppler, Seattle Times